Showing posts with label Education Policy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education Policy. Show all posts

Thursday 24 March 2022

Postgraduate Education in the UK - Analysis 2016 to 2022

Looking at how the UK postgraduate landscape has changed since the previous report was published a decade ago, this new report uses previously unpublished data to reveal the state of UK postgraduate education in the years before the Covid-19 crisis struck.

The analysis considers how postgraduate education was affected by the great recession of 2008 as well as at the successful implementation of student loans for home and EU postgraduate students from 2016/17 onwards.

The top 20 key findings in the report are listed below.

  1. There were 566,555 postgraduate students in 2017/18, of which 356,996 (63%) were in their first year – up by 16% since 2008/09 (p.22 and Table 2.1).
  2. Two-thirds (65%) of new postgraduates are studying for Master’s degrees, 10% are taking doctorates or other research degrees, 7% are doing teacher training and the rest (18%) a range of diplomas, certificates, professional qualifications and modules (Figure 2.1).
  3. The most popular discipline is Business & Administrative Studies (20%), followed by Education (14%) and Subjects Allied to Medicine (12%). Research postgraduates (64%) are more likely to study STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) but most taught postgraduates (68%) take non-STEM subjects (Table 2.2 and pp.26-27).
  4. Just over half of new UK-domiciled postgraduates (53%) study full-time, reversing past trends favouring part-time study – back in 2008/09, most postgraduates (59%) were part-time students (Table 2.4 and pp.32-33).
  5. More than half (60%) of new postgraduate students at UK institutions come from the UK, while one-third (32%) come from outside the EU and 8% come from EU countries. The majority of Master’s students (53%) come from outside the UK (Table 2.5 and Table 2.6).
  6. Between 2008/09 and 2017/18, UK-domiciled postgraduate entrants increased by 10% but students from overseas grew faster: EU-domiciled student numbers increased by 11% and non-EU international students grew by 33% (Table 3.2).
  7. Since the referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union, the number of new postgraduate students from EU countries has fallen(by 2% in 2017/18 and another 2% in 2018/19), but the reduction in the value of the pound contributed to a 10% increase in non-EU postgraduate starters in 2017/18 (Figure 3.14, p.81 and Figure 3.10).
  8. Chinese students formed 38% of the non-EU postgraduate cohort by 2017/18. Such heavy reliance on a single country exposes universities to greater risk from geo-political events (p.84 and Table 3.3).
  9. The introduction of £10,000 Master’s loans for home / EU students in 2016 had a big positive impact: UK-domiciled student numbers grew by 29% in one year and by 59% among those from the most disadvantaged areas. The loans have also encouraged above-inflation fee increases (Figure 2.22, Figure 3.11, p.80 and Table 5.3).
  10. The number of people taking Taught Master’s courses grew by 30% from 2008/09 to 2017/18, but the total has been volatile, particularly among UK students. Among all new postgraduates, justover half (51%) were full-time Taught Master’s students in 2017/18 (Table 3.1 and p.23).
  11. The great recession following the 2007/08 financial crash witnessed a marked rise in Master’s take-up, as employment opportunities were restricted and people brought forward their plans to study (Figure 3.12).
  12. The female:male ratio among new postgraduates is 60:40, or 62:38 among UK-domiciled students alone. This reflects greater female participation over time – in 2008/09, the overall female:male ratio was 55:45 (p.40 and Figure 2.12).
  13. The gender ratio varies considerably by discipline: women are in a big majority in Subjects Allied to Medicine (77%), Veterinary Sciences (72%) and Education (70%) and men are in a big majority in Engineering & Technology (78%), Computer Science (76%) and Mathematics (71%). Males outnumber females among PhD researchers (51%) (Table 2.7 and Figure 2.13).
  14. The proportion of postgraduate students aged under 30 has grown from 52% to 57% since 2008/09, reflecting a broader decline in people accessing lifelong learning opportunities (Figure 2.18 and p.48).
  15. White men, particularly disadvantaged White men, are less likely to undertake postgraduate study than others. Among UK-domiciled postgraduate entrants from the poorest areas, 64% are women and 36% are men (Table 2.9 and Figure 2.24).
  16. Women have a bigger boost to their earnings from postgraduate study, earning 28% more than women with only undergraduate degrees – the comparable figure for men is 12%. But women with postgraduate qualifications still earn 14% less on average than men with the same level of qualifications (Table 5.4 and p.120).
  17. In the last crash, employment among those with postgraduate qualifications was slower to fall and faster to recover than for those with only a first degree, which may signal how the labour market will respond to the current Covid-19 crisis (Figure 5.11).
  18. The abolition of post-study work visas (announced in 2011 and implemented in 2012) had a negative impact on demand for postgraduate study, most notably within India. The announcement that this policy is to be reversed is welcome but needs communicating quickly and clearly (Figure 3.15).
  19. Transnational education, where people take UK qualifications abroad, has seen substantial growth, more than doubling since 2007/08 to 127,825 postgraduates in 2017/18 and overtaking the number of overseas postgraduate students in the UK (p.58 and Table 2.11).
  20. Demand for postgraduate education is likely to grow over the long term: there could be an additional 22,750 undergraduates moving directly to postgraduate study by 2030 in England alone. While Brexit could mean a drop of around 11,500 EU postgraduates, successful implementation of the UK Government’s International Education Strategycould see an increase of 53,000 in other overseas postgraduates by 2030, although this partly depends on how the world recovers from the current Covid-19 crisis (pp.131-133).
The Report is by HEPI - The UK's only independent think tank devoted to higher education.

Thursday 5 August 2010

Fraudulent Tactics Lure Students to For-Profit Colleges

I find below article is in harmony with this site theme, it is US context, still many lessons are universal, it is not a master piece of research, it is just some sort of insight and news yet it is worth to read and ponder - Rushdy Razak

It sounds like an oxymoron, or at the least, a very bad idea. But ‘for-profit’ colleges, run by private corporations and often charging far more than their public counterparts, are spreading faster than you can say “massive debt” or "the next bubble to burst." click here to read more

Saturday 5 June 2010

Schools to become Academies

The new government is pleasing all schools in England to become academies and encouraging parents to set up their own schools. 
What is an academy?
Academies are publicly-funded schools which operate outside of local authority control. They have more freedom than other schools in the state sector over issues such as teachers' pay and how the school is governed.
They also have greater freedom to digress from the national curriculum. Academies are established with government cash. They are often housed in new state-of the-art buildings and there are currently 203 of them in England.
What is a free school?
Free schools were Education Secretary Michael Gove's flagship policy in the run-up to the general election. The aim is to give parents' groups, charities, trusts and voluntary groups the chance to set up and operate schools.
The scheme is based on the system in Sweden, where non-profit and profit-making groups can set up schools - funded by the government - but free from its control.
Courtesy: BBC Q&A
There are currently 203 academies in England, compared with about 3,500 secondary schools. But Sally Coates, the principal at Burlington Danes Academy school in west London, expects the benefits offered by academy status will entice more into taking up the government's invitation to convert.

The NUT (National Union of Teachers) said the move could spell the end of state-provided education. The ATL (Association of Teachers and Lecturers) union has described the coalition's academy proposals as "irresponsible" and the NASUWT (National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers) said the scheme could "segregate and fragment communities". Before the election, the Liberal Democrats described the concept of free schools as a "shambles".
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